


heartaches by the number

by orphan_account



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Multiple Universes, Soulmates, there are so many aus in here im not tagging them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22056859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: We keep meeting in happenstance, different realities pushing us to the same spot.or soulmates au where Alex and Henry keep meeting in different universes
Relationships: Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor
Comments: 21
Kudos: 126





	heartaches by the number

**Author's Note:**

  * For [guardiansofthefantasy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/guardiansofthefantasy/gifts).



> For xmoreth for the RWRB Discord Holiday Exchange. They said they love AUs so I just crammed like 20 of them into one fic. I hope you like it!
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated.

He slides beside me on a crowded train, elbow brushing against my shoulder when he pushes his earbuds on. The skyline blurs as the train speeds through the city. I don't talk to him. He's a person, one in a million unnamed faces I pass by in the street, waiting in line at a store, and standing on a crowded train.

He gets off a stop before mine. I don't see him again.

In another lifetime, I find him in the library cramming for his final exams. We exchange pleasantries but nothing else. I see him in the halls, running from class to class. I smile at him. He doesn’t smile back. 

In a café, same time, a different place, he orders his coffee dark with one sugar and cinnamon. I learn it all the third time he came into the shop, laptop in hand and a binder which grows thicker every time he visits. Sometimes, he leaves after an hour, other times he stays until the cafe closes.

He wants to help people, he says after I pull up a chair and sit next to him. He goes on about his work with the city councillor, law school, how law school was nothing like he expected, how it was. We talk and talk and talk, just us two and an empty cafe. 

Dawn breaks through the gray sky. He stifles a yawn, packs his things and says goodbye. I clean up the shop. He doesn't come back the next day and the next. Weeks turn into months turning into years. I think I see him on the street. It's never him.

We exchange letters during the long silence on no man's land. He writes about home across the Atlantic. I write about home across the channel. He writes about after, after the ceasefire, after they win the battle, after the war. I don’t write about our chances of survival. I don’t write about having met him in other lifetimes nor how I know it’s him by the fire in his eyes nor how perfect we fit sitting this close in the trenches. When he smiles, my heart spreads out of my chest, flying close to the sun. I don’t tell him. The rest of them are suspicious. They'll court-martial us when they find out.

After the battle, I find his body among the dead. There's a final letter in his pocket where a bullet ripped through the cloth and pierced his flesh. Soiled with dirt and blood, I can't read it.

I take his words, his impossible words with me through every battle; carry them on a ship across the channel after the war. I press them on my pillow when I marry a girl I don't love, will never love and play pretend for the rest of my life. I weave it into stories for my children, fanciful fairytales about love and hope and defying duty. They don't know they're about him. 

As I lay on my deathbed in this lifetime, I compose one final letter. Seventy years too late. 

At a casino in post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, he bargains with the guards to let him in. He sees me all dressed up in a three-piece suit. Our eyes linger on each other a second too long, and I imagine he knows as I do. The lifetimes we have shared, the lifetimes of missed opportunities. He approaches me, rugged in a tan desert coat and my heart stammers at every step. He says nothing as he walks past me. Later, I learn he was only at the casino for a chip. 

We keep meeting in happenstance, different realities pushing us to the same spot. In a castle with magic, wizards and a school, we meet in hidden alcoves. Each time we talk about classes and professors, and _after,_ after the year, after finishing his studies. Each time, I almost lay my heart out bare. I do not. 

In another castle, he sends me flowers from the gardens. I know they are from him. Only he knows I prefer lilies over roses. One day, they stop coming. I pluck the petals as I waste away from the sickness. Mother says if the plague doesn't kill me, love will. 

I have owned a bookshop while he runs the brewery next door. I have been a famous actor, while he was the bodyguard sworn to protect me. We have been rival secret agents forced to work together on a mission. In one lifetime, he is the captain of a rival sports team. In another, we play on the same team. He's the rogue captain of a spaceship, the hope of a colony gone astray. We watch the stars in his cabin as I treat his wounds. I almost kiss him then. Ten lifetimes later, I don't remember why I didn't. 

In some realities, we meet briefly, one in a million unnamed faces I see on the street. In others, he has found someone else. Most realities, we never meet and I wonder if he thinks of me as I do him. 

I feel my soul waning.

I’ve had enough.

First Son Alexander Claremont-Diaz kisses me, Prince Henry in front of our brownstone, unabashed. Snow has started falling down from Brooklyn's gray sky. It clings on his dark curls, his nose and his scarf and if I haven't fallen for him in a thousand lifetimes and this one, I would have done so again. 

"Finally," I say. He searches my eyes and I like to think he's recounting every lifetime we have shared, the close opportunities and the missed chances. 

He smiles. "Finally."

**Author's Note:**

> :^)  
> AUs: strangers/normal (?) people, college, coffee shop, ww1, post-apocalypse (fallout: new vegas), hogwarts, medieval, store owners, actor/bodyguard, secret agents, sports, space (outer worlds)
> 
> Come find me at [claremonts-diaz](https://claremonts-diaz.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


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